Our project has aimed to be participative and interactive.

Unlike many countries in the Global North where, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI 2026), little statistical data is to be had but where there are advanced labs that can research the effects of hunger, as well as food intake, on the brain and body, we in the Global South have few, if any, such labs.

In our research, therefore, the field is our laboratory, people our sources of self-reflexive understanding. Even with philosophically challenging ideas such as my proposition that hunger is an internalised qualia sensation, we have relied on community voices and personal experiences for confirmation of our theories (see ‘Home’ for a brief list of our hypotheses).

With this background in mind, I wish to wholeheartedly thank:

The participants from five continents and fourteen countries who contributed to the British Academy Convening Meetings between 2022 and 2025 on the fascinating theme “Times of a Just Transition.” I learnt much from each of them. This British Academy Project was led by Professor Keri Facer of the Department of Education, University of Bristol. I am enormously grateful to Keri for her intellectual verve, wisdom, empathy and insights into the future(s) of education, not to mention her matchless reserves of patience with my many oddities. I am also indebted to Professor Nomi Claire Lazar, Full Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs University of Ottawa, who co-led the project. My especial thanks to Nomi for sharing with me a very apposite poem by Plautus on hunger, circa 2nd century BCE! Finally, my appreciation for the support extended by my dear friend Peter deSouza, former Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla, and an integral member of the British Academy “Times of a Just Transition” group is, as always, boundless.

Sabaha Salim, Lakshya Thadani and Ashmeet Kaur contributed unstintingly to the initial research stages of this project, collecting, discussing and editing all the primary materials we gathered. Their help was invaluable.

The sculptor and artist K.S. Radhakrishnan gave us unreserved access to his magnificent oeuvre, displaying an artist’s grasp of what hunger means in a way that few researchers can.

My personal thanks go to Professor Veli Mitova of Johannesburg University and the African Centre for Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science (ACEPS) for their sterling support throughout this project.

The generosity of the families, students and communities, poor and not-so-poor, who contributed to this research is a lesson to all us in how grace and unselfishness work in practice.

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), where I was coincidentally Global Professorial Fellow during the three year period (2023-2026) when this project of hunger was first conceptualised, has my unreserved appreciation for its facilitation of our research.

As always, I am deeply grateful for the institutional support extended by my academic home, the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD).

As we continue to do our research we look forward to gaining many fresh insights into the complex cognitive and embodied properties of hunger and its great corollary, food.

— Rukmini Bhaya Nair, 2026